Neighbor studies: how Thai Academia colonizes, romanticizes and reconceptualizes its neighbors

Abstract

After "writing culture" (Clifford and Marcus 1986), anthropology and cultural studies have been constantly critical to themselves. One relating question that has been exploring during the past decade is the question of world anthropologies and the diversity of anthropologies that do not share experiences and practices as European and American anthropology do (Barth, Gingirch, Parkin and Silverman 2005; Bremen, Ben-Ari, and Alatas 2005; Ribeiro and Escobar 2006). In the context of Southeast Asian studies, although over the past two decades the state of this area study has constantly been reviewed (Wolters 1994; Steedly 1999; King 2003), still limited works focus on Southeast Asians studying Southeast Asia (Sears 2007). Built upon these scholarships, this paper asks what Southeast Asian studies by Southeast Asians look like, how Southeast Asian define Southeast Asia, whether or not there is a Southeast Asian studies by Southeast Asian, what characteristics of Southeast Asian studies by Southeast Asian look like.